(OSV News) -- It was one of the most contentious issues of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and now it’s an estimated $170 billion component of the Senate version of the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”: immigration enforcement and deportation.
The bill passed the Senate July 1 after Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie, and it now heads back to the House of Representatives for final approval. On X, Vance argued that aggressive immigration enforcement was worth the bill’s cuts to social supports (opposed by the U.S. bishops) and the anticipated several trillion dollars added to the national debt.
“The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,” Vance, a Catholic, argued on X prior to the bill’s passage, adding, “Everything else -- the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy -- is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
Catholic reaction to both the 940-page bill’s immigration proposals and related on-the-ground developments has seemingly walked a careful line between compliance and concern over Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials coast to coast conduct daily raids in neighborhoods, workplaces and store parking lots -- with the realization that the witness of the Catholic Church will be watched, by public and politicians alike.
“We all agree that we don’t want undocumented immigrants who are known terrorists or violent criminals in our communities,” Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez said June 9, following unrest in the city. “But there is no need for the government to carry out enforcement actions in a way that provokes fear and anxiety among ordinary, hardworking immigrants and their families.”
‘Big Beautiful Bill’ draws bishops’ fire on immigration provisions
ICE data released June 16 indicates fewer than 10% of those taken into custody since October 2024 have been charged with violent crimes, and more than 75% had no record other than traffic or immigration offenses.
That same day, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a reflection ahead of a weeklong USCCB retreat in California.
“In the context of a gravely deficient immigration system, the mass arrest and removal of our neighbors, friends and family members on the basis of immigration status alone, particularly in ways that are arbitrary or without due process, represent a profound social crisis before which no person of good will can remain silent,” said Archbishop Broglio, who heads the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services. “The situation is far from the communion of life and love to which this nation of immigrants should strive.”
Like Archbishop Gomez, he praised law enforcement actions “aimed at preserving order and ensuring community security” as “necessary for the common good” but also declared, “The current efforts go well beyond those with criminal histories.”
Prior to the House and Senate passing their respective bills, the USCCB directed a letter to each respective chamber of Congress regarding the Trump bill, “both to commend certain important provisions, but also strongly to urge reconsideration of provisions that will harm the poor and disadvantaged, as well as our immigrant brothers and sisters.”
“Many provisions in this package also double down on an unsustainable enforcement-only approach to immigration, while unjustly placing immigrant and mixed-status families at a profound disadvantage,” the bishops’ letter stated. “Among these are provisions that penalize families who go to painstaking lengths to comply with the law, including those fleeing persecution.”
“We are also deeply concerned about the unprecedented levels of mandatory funding that would escalate enforcement far beyond the legitimate goals of promoting public safety and bringing to justice those who commit crimes,” added the bishops. “These provisions are contrary to the common good.”
Bishops urged to speak out forcefully
J. Kevin Appleby -- senior fellow for policy and communications at the Center for Migration Studies in New York City and former director of migration policy and public affairs at the USCCB from 1998-2016 -- predicted such enforcement tactics will deeply impact American Catholicism.
“This bill will fuel immigration raids, mass detention and family separation across the country, targeting immigrant families who sit in Catholic pews every Sunday,” he said. “It also will adversely affect the church in the U.S. as an institution, as we will see more enforcement activity around parishes, with Mass attendance dwindling. Religious freedom should apply to all persons, not just to U.S. citizens.”
Appleby also urged the U.S. bishops to be even more vocal in their opposition.
“The Catholic community, whether it be the bishops or individual parishioners, should strongly oppose this legislation, as it violates many aspects of Catholic teaching by harming the poor and the migrant,” he emphasized. “From a pro-life perspective, it could increase the number of abortions, as this bill could force a significant number of low-income women into poverty.”
Abortion in the U.S. is heavily correlated with poverty and low incomes. Guttmacher Institute, which supports legal abortion, reported 75% of women seeking abortion were low-income, with 50% below the federal poverty line. About six out of 10 women seeking abortion were already mothers. The top concerns reported included not being able to afford another child, losing the ability to work or continue education, or having to care for dependents or other family responsibilities.
“To be perfectly honest,” Appleby said, “the bishops should be screaming from their pulpits against this bill, as the credibility of the church’s moral voice is on the line.”
‘Big Beautiful Bill’ lays mass deportation groundwork
“It really is one of the most consequential immigration enforcement bills that we’ve seen in decades,” observed Dylan Corbett, a USCCB consultant and executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a grassroots immigration advocacy organization working in the region of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and Las Cruces, New Mexico.
“It’s the last piece in putting together the groundwork for mass deportations,” Corbett said. “And it is an unprecedented investment in an enforcement-only approach -- which will do damage to families in communities throughout the country. This is an exclusively punitive approach to managing immigration in our country.”
According to the Washington-based CATO Institute, immigration and border enforcement spending is two-thirds of fiscal year 2025 federal law enforcement appropriations.
“We’re criminalizing our sister and brother immigrants on the backs of the poor,” Corbett argued. “We’re cutting essential social service programs -- like Medicaid programs that protect life; programs that ensure that we can provide healthcare to adopted children. We’re cutting these programs in order to invest in this senseless approach.”
“I think this bill can’t be corrected,” he added. “We have to throw it in the wastebasket. We’ve got to start over.”
Corbett and his colleagues are -- given their location -- at the nexus of immigration and deportation actions.
“Here in El Paso, every single day, people are being deported when their cases are being dismissed by judges,” reported Corbett. “As soon as they walk out of the courtroom, they’re being deported.”
Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute -- a New York City-based think tank “dedicated to the rule of law in America” -- recommended in a recent issue brief that Congress should hire 250 additional immigration judges annually over the next four years to reduce case backlog; implement a “last-in, first-out” rule for processing asylum cases; and charge asylum-seekers “a reasonable processing fee” of $1,000 in addition to what many already pay for lawyers they hire. The fee, Di Martino said, “would discourage frivolous filings.”
Corbett -- like Archbishops Gomez and Broglio -- acknowledges the state’s responsibility to protect communities. But he, too, questions whether “they’re going after people who represent a threat to our communities or whether they’ve simply thrown enforcement priorities in the garbage and they’re going after everybody, including people who have been here for decades -- families; people who are contributing economically.”
Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami recently echoed that same concern in the June 11 edition of his archdiocesan column, noting that “a mass deportation campaign, which this legislation funds, will prove detrimental to the future of our nation, as long-term residents with U.S.- citizen children who work hard and contribute to our economy and culture will be removed. This does not serve the long-term interests and the values of our country.”
David Spicer, assistant director of policy at the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services, said the unprecedented “Big Beautiful Bill” appropriations represent an almost 400% increase in detention funds over the previous budget appropriation.
“With this amount of money, ICE could fund immigration detention at a capacity almost equal to that of the entire federal prison system,” he said. “Families and individuals with no criminal histories -- including those with U.S.-citizen spouses and children -- would be even more susceptible to the sort of unmitigated, haphazard enforcement efforts we’re already starting to see in many places.”
“This would be completely contrary to the bishops’ consistent call for immigration enforcement to be targeted, proportionate, and humane, and,” Spicer added, “it would do little, if anything, to promote public safety.”
Both the House and Senate measures override protections for unaccompanied noncitizen children, Spicer also said, imposing fees and providing funds for expedited removal -- regardless of age -- without access to legal counsel. Both versions additionally impose new and increased fees for a variety of immigration benefits, including legal work authorization and basic requests made in immigration court proceedings.
The practical effect of such fees -- which are “insurmountable” and “exorbitant” for migrants, Spicer emphasized -- is that “even someone with the clearest possible asylum claim, who is all but guaranteed to face life-threatening persecution, could be denied relief in the United States if lacking the ability to pay for it.”
Eligibility for SNAP food assistance programs is also stripped from noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S., as well as the eligibility of some mixed-status families for the child tax credit -- namely, prohibiting non-citizen parents without a Social Security Number claiming the credit for a citizen child.
“Unfortunately, the overall impact of this bill would be to weaken our legal immigration system, while providing a massive influx of resources for immigration enforcement that will have a disproportionate effect on families and children,” Spicer said. “All the while, Congress could be working on meaningful immigration reform that recognizes the essential contributions of immigrants, and responds to the needs of American communities.”
